Canadian police chased after speeding Tesla, which seemed… empty

However, these do not appear to always work or can be easily circumvented, as the recent Canadian case shows.

The event took place in July, but only now the people guilty of all the fuss have been punished, that is ... a 20-year-old Tesla driver who decided to take a nap while driving and give the car control to the virtual hands of Autopilot.

As a result, the positioned passenger and driver seats gave the impression that there was no one in the car, so the police immediately set off in pursuit when they received a report of "Tesla Model S rushing on the highway".

When they managed to get close to the car, it was speeding at 140 km / n, breaking the current 110 km / h limit, and accelerating to 150 km / h when the patrol turned on the beacons.

• It looked as if no one was in the car, but the car started to accelerate because there was a free space in front of them.

I've been a policeman for 23 years, most of that time in traffic, and I didn't know what to say.

I've never seen anything like this before, but of course there has been no such technology before, comments one of the officers involved, Sergeant Darrin Turnbull.

As it turned out, of course, there was a passenger and a driver in the car, but both men dozed on the folded seats.

And while the former could afford it, the latter did not, hence the penalty for speeding, dangerous driving and 24-hour suspension of the driving license for driving in a state of exhaustion.

should be possible in this situation, because Tesla has introduced some security measures.

That is, the Tesla Autopilot does indeed have a high level of autonomy at level 3, but drivers cannot take full advantage of it, because by law their hands must be on the steering wheel, in full readiness to take control of the vehicle immediately.

The system can therefore drive the vehicle, i.e. accelerate and slow down, maintaining a safe distance from other drivers, brake or even change lanes, but if we only remove our hands from the steering wheel, appropriate voice commands will remind us that it is not allowed and, if necessary, cut off the options

This means that the car begins to slow down and pull over to the side of the road, preventing further autopilot driving.

So how did the driver manage to cheat him?

Police officers leave no doubt that there are solutions on the market that allow you to modify the system after purchase, including the use of full autonomy, although the manufacturer obviously does not recommend it, because these are not cars intended for such driving.

As the Canadian federal police emphasized in a recent speech: "While new car makers have envisaged measures to prevent drivers from abusing new car safety systems, these systems are only complementary safety measures."

They are not self-propelled systems and still require responsibility for driving.

What is worth emphasizing, by the way, if the event took place a bit later, the police would probably not even receive a report, because as part of one of the latest updates, Tesla received the ability to detect speed limits, which can make it much more difficult to detect fraud.